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Beyond the Beyond: Update 40: Act 2 wrap-up and bonus material
We finished another act in the game so it's time to peek under the hood again and mess with things. First, however...
Here is your Act 2 recap!
Wandering around southern Greenheim there were few clues about the village of the elders that Sir Bison told them to go to had no help for Sir Samson - well, unless you don't count adding Tont to the roster as help. By picking up a random emerald off the ground while climbing the cliffs the team was able to help an elderly wizard blow the roof off of his house and botch a summoning ritual. Unfortunately the wizard seems to have learned nothing from the experience but we got Tont out of the deal so, meh, we'll call it a draw. Bolstered by Tont's magic they then walked back across Greenheim to plunder the depth's of Arawn's Palace. The team then went to Luna and traded the utterly priceless, time-warping artifact, the Moon Crescent, for the Statue of Gaea. Then it was off to the southern tip of Greenheim and the isolated village of Jonowan.
When they arrived they found Domino and his band of elusive, ever off screen pirates had gotten there first but the crew had abandoned Domino to whatever horrors had been unleased upon Gaea Island. With the statue the team could pretend they were Moses and part the waters allowing them to cross from the village of Jonowan to the Island of Gaea. On the island they found the shrine was dark, cold, and filled to the brim with deadly monsters. At the top was Domino but as they approached a demon sent by Shutat emerged from the pool to ambush them. After killing the demon Domino turned out to be just fine, that he did indeed have the Vase of Life, and that he was perfectly willing to surrender it to the team that had just saved his life so long as they promised to use the vase to scale Arawn's Tower.
Oh yeah and there was some stuff in there about Domino trying to avenge his dead family who were slain by monsters.
The Vase of Life, water from the Island of Gaea, and the Magic Bean were then used in Arawn's Palace to create a giant beanstalk reaching up to the Tower of Arawn. Despite having been created mere minutes before the beanstalk was already infested with monsters when the team started climbing. I guess monsters have real estate agents who are super dedicated to their jobs.
Despite the beanstalk and tower having more monsters then much of the continent the team pushed onward and upward until they at least reached Arawn. Arawn got straight to the point and told them they had to do something about Bandore and ancient evils trying to rise from the underworld - pretty normal stuff for a Camelot game. Then he sent them to the shrine near Simone where Zeon, master magician of Simone (whose name I still can't take seriously because WTF?), at long last removed the curse on Sir Samson.
End of recap.
A Matter of Shenanigans
Before I continue I will point out the two codes I will be using. The first is a walk-through-walls code which I have been using for some time. Added to that, however, is a no encounters code. For my previous bonus update I didn't mess with manipulating enemy encounters. Now, however, with encounters more frequent and significantly deadler I am going to exercise some caution and disable them when they're not needed. It greatly cuts down on tedium and speeds up checking things.
Unfortunately I also have a bit of a confession to make. There actually isn't much to talk about for act 2. There are few scripted events to mess with and those that are present either don't have much, if any, character-specific dialogue in them. There also isn't much out of bounds fun stuff to look at. Town maps are cleaner, simpler, and apparently more complete. Bummer. Well, Simone is an exception but I've already covered that.
First, though, I do want to note that Percy will not appear in group scenes in this part of the game. I still have that savefile in St. Baldrick's Garden right before Percy leaves the party and I did do some more running around with him. That's the main reason why I needed a No Encounters code. Yeah, encounters are disabled at that point in the game but they will be turned back on if you enter and leave what is normally a no encounters area like the exterior map of Arawn's Palace. Rather then spending time grinding experience or using codes to adjust character levels I just turned encounters off directly. That made it possible to get up Arawn's Tower although I did use an inventory code to give the party the Magic Bean and Vase of Life. I'll come back to this later.
That said it is possible to avoid the Water Demon using the walk-through-walls code. The trigger for the pre-fight dialogue is stepping on one of several tiles which is easy to avoid if you can walk around the trigger point.
The only other thing of mild interest in the water shrine is that the floors are once again numbered off in the corners off screen. Most can't be seen, however, because of the upper layer creating the spotlight-in-darkness effect. The "light" cannot scroll to the screen's edge so there's no way to see the map's corners without a way to disable the layer.
There's also no way to avoid the statue at the start of the 7th floor because it is right by the staircase down. Avoiding the second statue requires using walk-through-walls to reach the staircase up.
Referring back to that screenshot with Domino above, when approaching from the north through the pool actually talking to Domino isn't necessary. His dialogue is triggered by stepping on the tile north of him.
Doing so causes the game to move the party south but doesn't move Domino next to the vase. Finn takes off because the walk-through-walls code is still active. Domino's position isn't correct because the Water Demon hasn't appeared yet. When it does he's scripted to crawl towards the vase thus making a conveniently open path for the demon to leave the pool.
Having the wrong start point makes Domino walk around the group and slam right through a wall presumably leaving a Domino shaped hole behind him. Pirates!
And yes it is a simple matter to just walk over and grab the Vase of Life resulting in two key items sitting in inventory that wouldn't normally be possible to have at the same time.
The astute will note that I have Percy in this party but that he wasn't seen in previous screenshots. Once again, Percy will not appear in scenes where he isn't expected.
Pictured: Finn and company totally falling for the trap. Unfortunately despite the fact that Domino has fled and they have the Vase of Life it is impossible to run away from boss battles. It's also impossible for a team consisting of three level 4 characters and two level 1 characters to beat the Water Demon.
And as evidence I present what happens when said team turns off No Encounters in the shrine. I had to toggle off codes so Finn could pick up the Vase of Life without sprinting out of bounds again. It's not exactly fun trying to maneuver characters who have run way out of bounds back into camera view.
The party wipe sent the group back to the garden since that was the last place the game was saved. Since Percy was dead I decided it was the perfect time to check something I didn't get to do with the first bonus update. That's right it's time for...
...the misadventures of Ghost!Percy! He's back and not only is he just as invisible as before he's joined by an entire crew of invisible characters. Alas nothing in the scene changes or even remotely breaks. The game just doesn't load any sprites for the dead characters.
It does mean Finn has an odd scene running around nodding and gesturing to someone who isn't there while Steiner watches. It looks like Finn's practicing some sort of improv show while Steiner hovers there unimpressed.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
In the Tower of Arawn we got see a neat little technical trick that wasn't possible on the Sega Genesis. The exterior of the tower are two image layers but the upper layer is applied to a curved surface causing it to warp and transform to create the illusion of depth. It repeats itself over and over again like a spindle being unspooled meaning that it's not possible to leave the tower part of the screen and walk over the cloudy background until the upper layer is fully unspooled.
Collision is set in something of a haphazard manner. There are six floors to the exterior map but only five ended up used. (The first, second, and eighth floor interior maps have no exits to this map.) The bottom floor has no collision and none of the doors go anywhere. In fact only a few of the twelve doors on each floor useable from the interior maps work on the exterior. Most are just set dressing.
Scrolling in the opposite direction eventually just stops in a manner that looks rather awkward. That's why every floor has an ankle-high insurmountable wall - to conceal the scrolling limits. All in all it is fairly impressive for the time it was made even if the statues look ridiculous when squished at the edge of the curve.
The inside of Arawn's Tower is boring and mundane until the team reaches the top floor. Tucked inside the lower right corner are a series of sprites all stacked up on top of one another. Annie, Tont, and Samson are visible. Edward's presumably hidden from view. There's also the castle overworld sprite and then beneath that the glowing orb.
As was already pointed out in update 39 the game managed to fail pretty hard with a scene using the overworld map. Due to technical reasons locations on the map could not be shown on screen meaning the castle sprite ended up loaded but unused.
Not far to the left is a bit of architecture sitting just off screen. Clearly it is a doorway.
Here's a side by side camparison of how it stacks up against the exterior doors on the floors below. Without the lighting it looks like an empty void where a staircase was going to be placed except the staircase tiles were never added.
And here's a screenshot to identify its location on the map. It's just outside of camera view. Since there is an unused floor on the exterior map I'm guessing this interior map was supposed to be another puzzle floor but that got scrapped in the crunch to finish the tower. Was the plan to have the scene with Arawn up on the roof? That would make a lot more sense because an open platform would let the kids easily see the surrounding landscape. There's also a history of tower rooftops being the location of important scenes. Darksol kills Kain at the top of the tower in Dragonia in Shining Force. Mishaela revives Darksol at the top of the ancient tower in Final Conflict, etc.
The cave connecting Simone to the rest of the continent has some strange things going on out of bounds. For some reason a copy of the sky background is on the upper layer out of bounds on the right/east side.
Meanwhile the left/west side has a narrow strip of land way out of bounds that seems to serve no purpose. None of these tiles are animated so there's no need to have, for example, a block copy loaded and waiting.
And just because I could here's a screenshot with as much of the sky background visible as I could get on screen. Finn and Steiner have walked off screen to the north so I didn't even have to use image compositing to get another nice screenshot. I will say this for Beyond the Beyond - it does have some pretty pixel art backgrounds!
Inside the cave the fog (which still makes it near impossible for me to see where I'm going) is the upper layer with translucency and a continuous warping routine being run on it. In a few areas the eastern edge is visible because the edge of the layer and the edge of eastern scrolling coincide.
In Luna the usual daytime map doesn't have warp points set for the ladders which makes sense since there is no daytime equivalent to all the underground building interiors.
And no there is nothing of interest behind any of the counters underground. For a pirate town it is kind of boring.
At least the man we traded the Statue of Gaea to has something new to say concerning his use of the Moon Crescent.
...Oh! There you are! I messed around too much last night. Now, I'm really tired.
He hasn't broken anything... yet. Give him time. He clearly doesn't understand the Crescent involves time travel. That's the only way what the crystal does makes sense.
On a final note the default state of the shrine above Simone is right after the cleansing ceremony. Talking to Zeon or Samson initiates the sequence where the rock is removed. If Samson has been cursed this process does not reverse that. Going through the scene with Arawn in the tower will though although if you're doing this to jump ahead in the game you could probably just tough it out.
SEQUENCE BREAKING
With walk through walls codes it is fairly easy to do some sequence breaks. For the following, however, I had to use a code to give the team the Magic Bean and the Vase of Life. As demonstrated earlier it is possible to snag the Vase by walking around the trigger tiles for the fight with the Water Demon but using codes was faster and didn't carry that pesky risk of death.
Up the tower went the Border Church crew. (The save file that keeps on giving!) Enemy encounters had to be disabled because there's no way they could win a random encounter in the tower. The first thing I want to point out is a bit of sneaky trigger setting. Once again the developers try to avoid a Dead Party Member Speaks situation with the Arawn cutscene. Arawn doesn't appear until the Gem of Life is activated which revives anyone who is dead in the party.
I mentioned earlier but will point out again that this team has Percy but his sprite doesn't appear because he's not supposed to be in the party at this point in the game. The game loads sprites for this scene and stacks them off in the lower right corner and Percy's sprite apparently isn't loaded in that set. Sorry Percy but you're just not scripted to be here. Tont also doesn't appear since we haven't recruited him yet. That's why he has no dialogue scripted for this scene. The developers didn't bother with code branches so he just sits there utterly mute. Poor kid can't catch a break.
After the whole uncursing scene the game runs a check and if Samson's level is below 15 he gets a boost up to that point. The player doesn't have any control over his stat gains, however, so this would not be an optimal way to level him up. It's not so bad though that he's a liability. Compare his stats to how he was at level 16 in update 35 keeping in mind he got some stat boosters.
My biggest grip continues to be the slow gains in VP and LP. Come on he's a giant bruiser with ZERO MP. He should be a veritable wall of hit points! Samson is unique in that there are two stat set up tables for him in RESIUS.BAT on the game disc. One's for when he's level 15 and the other is for when he's at level 1. These tables set starting stats, equipment, and spells.
Samson is the only character who gets this boost. To illustrate that here's Prince Edward at level 1 and still sitting at 0 experience points. I can think of two reasons to have this in the game.
1: Samson being cursed, players may be strongly tempted to kill him off and leave him dead thus forcing him to lag behind in experience. 2: Samson was level 15 when he first appeared in the game and the developers are trying to be consistent by making it clear that the power that Ramue stripped away with the curse was suppressed, not stolen.
Whatever the case may be Samson's stats will be recalculated. Compare the screenshot of him above to how he first appeared in update 8 to see that in action. Samson didn't gain any experience in the team aside from that band of Bandore soldiers they are scripted to fight so this is as honest of a representation of the stat recalculation as I can give.
UPDATE: Later testing proved that his stats are NOT recalculated. They are stored as-is and will be overwritten.
Next time on Beyond the Beyond - the start of Act 3 and rubbing one smug jerk's nose in Samson's restored power.
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